(a) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display typically includes two panels with field generating electrodes such as a pixel electrode and a common electrode and typically includes a liquid crystal layer interposed between the panels. The liquid crystal display generates an electric field in a liquid crystal layer by applying voltage to the field generating electrodes to control the orientation of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer, thereby controlling polarization of incident light through the generated electric field and displaying desired images.
A vertically aligned (VA) mode liquid crystal display, wherein long axes of liquid crystal molecules are substantially vertical to display panels when electric fields are not applied, may have a relatively large contrast ratio and a relatively wide standard viewing angle. Herein, the standard viewing angle means a viewing angle where a contrast ratio is 1:10 or a luminance reverse critical angle between grays.
In a VA mode liquid crystal display, one pixel may include two subpixels, and different voltages may be applied to the two subpixels to make transmittances thereof different, so that lateral surface visibility may approximate front surface visibility.
Nevertheless, the configuration with two subpixels and with different voltages applied to the two subpixels may cause undesirably high luminance of the lateral surface at a low gray as compared to the front surface, and therefore it may be difficult to express a precise gray in a low gray region. In addition, the total luminance supported by the applied pixel voltage may be undesirably low, and therefore the driving efficiency of the display device may be undesirable.
In a VA mode liquid crystal display, if the pixel electrode and a signal line overlap each other, when polarity of the voltage applied to the signal line is reversed, the voltage of the pixel electrode may be changed. As a result, display quality may be undesirable.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention. The Background section may contain information that does not belong to the prior art.